Yea, I know exactly how he must have felt. Fortunately, enough things in Taiwan are in English that I could get around. For example, street signs, monuments, that kind of stuff. The subway system in Taipei operates in different languages, with English being one of them. Movies and television shows are subtitled due to the different dialects people speak (the written language is Traditional Chinese), and some of them (movies in particular) have English subtitles as well.

The system allows me to learn to read characters and words, kind of like the Rosetta Stone. If I had to spend an extended period of time there, I'd pick it right up fairly easily.

Mainland China was the same way. I was surprised the first time I went there.

The system allows me to learn to read characters and words, kind of like the Rosetta Stone. If I had to spend an extended period of time there, I'd pick it right up fairly easily.

Language learning tools on the internet and mobile devices are amazing now. The Zhongwen extension on Chrome gives you popup translations. Pleco, the dictionary I use on my iPhone, does a very lifelike text to speech, popup translations and OCR. For Chinese, learning sites like ChinesePod, Popup Chinese and FluentU. OS X has amazing built in Chinese capabilities.

Language learning tools on the internet and mobile devices are amazing now. The Zhongwen extension on Chrome gives you popup translations. Pleco, the dictionary I use on my iPhone, does a very lifelike text to speech, popup translations and OCR. For Chinese, learning sites like ChinesePod, Popup Chinese and FluentU. OS X has amazing built in Chinese capabilities.

Can I say 1.75 counting fractions :) Only fluent in English, but took lots of German in school and was once decently conversational. Terrible now but would pick it back up quickly if needed. Also took some Spanish as an adult. Picked it up pretty quick but never got much past able to get around as a tourist in Latin America. Two best friends are fluent French speakers, and before grad school went through an obsessive phase teaching myself French for fun, but didn't have the time to keep up with it the past 5-6 years. Can read very so so, and got around okay on the trip my wife and I took to Paris, but can speak much better than I can comprehend, and not all that good at speaking! At least my accent's not too bad. Had a couple situations in Paris where I'd say a sentence or two I'd thought about for a while and I sounded good enough that suddenly the person I was talking to would think I spoke decent French and start jabbering away at me at full speed and I'd understand every 8th word and have no idea what they were saying.

If we're counting programming languages then I can say fluent in 4, conversational in 3-4 more :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by geauxforbroke

I know enough Spanish and German to get myself in trouble. The problem I have when trying to speak one of them is I might say something like "Ich habe dos cervezas".

English, French, Spanish. Understand some German, Italian, Portugese. Studied Russian for a short time in High School a looooooooooong time ago, remember about 3 words, also Latin and ancient Greek (had a European education to start with before coming back stateside about 50 years ago).

Oh yeah BTW, I can count to ten in Spanish (picked up living in Key West as a kid), and in Japanese and Korean (from marital arts instructors I've had).

Funny thing is that they taught us Spanish early in elementary school in Key West and I knew enough to be able to halfway understand the Cuban kids on the block but I don't remember any of it now and wouldn't have a clue what they are saying.

English is my native language, and I can understand Spanish 100% and at one point was near fluency speaking it as well. Not so much now; not taking anymore classes on it nor do any of my current friends speak it.